Unravelling Textile Reinforced Cementitious composites by means of multi-modal sensing techniques (FWOAL902)

The project aims at a procedure for quality control of modern civil engineering components based on millimeter wave electromagnetic methods (MMW). It involves textile reinforced cementitious (TRC) composites which are increasingly used in industry for reasons of weight and sustainability. These modern systems though, exhibit an extremely complex mechanical and fracture behavior and need status verification in the different stages of their service life: at manufacturing stage (curing), final product quality (manufacturing defects), deterioration during use (damage accumulation). Since reliable monitoring is required to examine the material performance the project introduces advanced contact-free MMW applicable as a novel universal non-destructive evaluation methodology at various stages of the life cycle of TRC composites. In addition, it combines several inspection techniques based on elastic waves (acoustic emission and ultrasound), optical
measurements (digital image correlation) and infrared imaging that collect information from a global perspective. The project wishes to challenge the limits of monitoring in all stages of the components life and provide a multi-physics signal interpretation based on the vast and largely unexplored capacities of MMW for TRC evaluation and the benchmarking offered by techniques more established in the field. The project will give feedback on the optimal curing conditions, prediction of failure mode as well as the design of the geometry.

Keywords:cement, composite

Disciplines:Engineering and technology, Social sciences